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“Particulates” - Acrylic paint on canvas
(Background WIP for an upcoming, more fully realized piece. Only one more of these to go, then on to post-apocalyptic brushed-painted fantasy art and poetical lore! This is gonna rule. Stayed tuned...)
A study led by researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) revealed that fine particulate matter from 1980
A study led by researchers from Nanyang Technological University, Singapore (NTU Singapore) revealed that fine particulate matter from 1980 to 2020 was associated with approximately 135 million premature deaths globally. The findings were published in April in the peer-reviewed journal Environment International. In the study, premature deaths refer to fatalities that occur earlier than expected based on average life expectancy, resulting from preventable or treatable causes such as diseases or environmental factors. The study found that the impact of pollution from fine particulate matter was worsened by climate variability phenomena such as the El Niño-Southern Oscillation, the Indian Ocean Dipole, and the North Atlantic Oscillation, and led to a 14 percent rise in premature deaths.
Continue Reading.
Excerpt from this story from Yale Environment 360:
A new toll applied to cars driving in parts of New York City has led to a measurable drop in traffic, and with it, a 22 percent decline in particulate pollution, according to a new study.
Congestion pricing came into effect in January, with cars paying $9 to drive through busy parts of Manhattan during peak hours. In the first six months of the program, traffic in the congestion zone dropped by 11 percent, accidents by 14 percent, and complaints of excessive honking or other noise by 45 percent, officials said.
A new study from Cornell has now tallied the impact on particulate pollution. Particulates issued from tailpipes can aggravate asthma and heart disease and increase the risk of lung cancer and heart attack. Globally, they are a leading risk factor for premature death.
Analyzing data on air quality, traffic, and weather conditions, researchers determined that in the first half of this year, particulate pollution was down 22 percent in parts of Manhattan affected by congestion pricing.
The decline seen in New York was greater than in other cities with congestion pricing, such as Stockholm and London, researchers note. And the effect extended beyond Lower Manhattan. Pricing led to a drop in pollution across the greater metropolitan area, according to the study, published in the journal npj Clean Air.
Particulates
We have gigantic sound walls around highways that slowly turn dark. Tire manufacturers do thousands of hours of testing to determine wear, YouTuber Tom Scott has videos about this from years ago.
It's why electric cars can't be 'the future'. One, because one of the first commercially viable electric car was Bersey's cabs in… 1897. But two, the tires are still rubber. It takes more than battery tech and paying Wren an indulgence to plant trees. We have to rethink our concept of transportation.
The locomotives are expected to reduce airborne particulate matter (PM2.5) emissions by 385 tons - the equivalent emissions of 7,000 gasolin
Material from dry landscapes has surged since the 1800s, possibly helping to cool the planet for decades
Dust that billows up from desert storms and arid landscapes has helped cool the planet for the past several decades, and its presence in the atmosphere may have obscured the true extent of global heating caused by fossil fuel emissions.
Atmospheric dust has increased by about 55% since the mid-1800s, an analysis suggests. And that increasing dust may have hidden up to 8% of warming from carbon emissions.
The analysis by atmospheric scientists and climate researchers in the US and Europe attempts to tally the varied, complex ways in which dust has affected global climate patterns, concluding that overall, it has worked to somewhat counteract the warming effects of greenhouse gasses. The study, published in Nature Reviews Earth and Environment, warns that current climate models fail to take into account the effect of atmospheric dust.
“We’ve been predicting for a long time that we’re headed toward a bad place when it comes to greenhouse warming,” said Jasper Kok, an atmospheric physicist at UCLA who led the research. “What this research shows is that so far, we’ve had the emergency brake on.”
Limited records from ice cores, marine sediment records, and other sources suggest that dust overall had also been increasing since pre-industrial times – in part due to development, agriculture, and other human impacts on landscapes. But the amount of dust also seems to have been decreasing since the 1980s.
More data and research is needed to better understand these dust patterns, Winckler said, and better predict how they will change in coming years.
But if dust in the atmosphere is decreasing, the warming effects of greenhouse gases could speed up.
“We could start to experience faster and faster warming because of this,” Kok said. “And maybe we’re waking up to that reality too late.”
In Rīga, coal will be banned from use for heating, Rīga City Council agreed December 29, LETA reported.
(..) The territorial zones are defined taking into account the spatial dispersion of particulate matter (PM) 2.5 pollution of nitrogen dioxide and airborne suspended particulate matter, as well as the spatial distribution of emissions of individual and local heating installations and the contribution to total pollution levels.(..).
This mesmerising visualisation displays the distribution of aerosols on August 23, 2018.
Like a cosmic galaxy, sea salt aerosols (blue), black carbon particulates (red) and dust (purple) are seen scattered across the planet, captured by NASA’s Earth-observing satellites, Terra, Aqua, Aura and Suomi NPP and modeled using Goddard Earth Observing System Forward Processing (GEOS FP). On this particular day, smoke plumes drifted over North America and Africa, three tropical cyclones tossed in the Pacific Ocean, and significant dust clouds blew over deserts in Asia and Africa, which can be clearly seen in the image.
While atmospheric aerosols of dust and sea salt are quite natural, the red plumes of black carbon are a somewhat different story. Black carbon is a sooty black material that mainly arises from petroleum and diesel engines, coal-fired power plants, and other sources that burn fossil fuels- making it a fingerprint of human activity.
Importantly, black carbon is a key constituent of fine Particulate Matter (PM 2.5) which can have serious implications on global public health. In 2018, the annual World Air Quality Report [1] stated that out of >3,000 cities monitored, 64% exceeded the World Health Organisation’s annual exposure guideline for PM 2.5, which is cause for concern. Indeed, it is estimated that air pollution contributes to 7 million premature deaths annually [2], providing plenty of motivation to (quite literally) clean up our act.
Jean
Image Credit: NASA/Joshua Stevens/Adam Voiland
[1] https://www.iqair.com/blog/press-releases/IQAir-AirVisual-2018-World-Air-Quality-Report-Reveals-Worlds-Most-Polluted-Cities
[2] https://www.who.int/news-room/detail/02-05-2018-9-out-of-10-people-worldwide-breathe-polluted-air-but-more-countries-are-taking-action[_
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